


whomp, there it is

by fourshoesfrank



Series: autistic marvel [12]
Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Autism Spectrum, Autistic Frank Castle, Gen, TW meltdowns, This was requested, i cant give frank a break can i huh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 18:24:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19156468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourshoesfrank/pseuds/fourshoesfrank
Summary: requested by maddie hendu: Sarah and the kids' reaction to Frank having a meltdown in front of them.





	whomp, there it is

**Author's Note:**

> sorry this took so long.....

Leo knew what autism was. She felt like it would be rude not to, since someone she cared about was autistic. Being in the dark about Frank’s neurotype (she’d stopped calling him Pete a long time ago) had just seemed rude, so Leo had read up on autism as much as she could without reading really ableist medical journals. The articles that made the most sense and seemed the most reasonable were the ones written by autistic people themselves. 

Leo had read up on autism, so she knew what a meltdown was. It was slightly different for every autistic person, but every website said that they would look like they were in distress before it happened. 

Frank definitely looked like he was in distress. His right index finger was twitching like he would rather be shooting a gun than sitting on the living room couch listening to Zach talk about his math project. It wasn’t hard to figure out what was causing him distress. Leo was pretty sure that the sound of the neighbors sawing wood for their new deck wasn’t helping. Some autistic people thought loud noises were painful; this was another thing that most of the websites had agreed on.   
Leo got up and pulled the window shut to quiet the noise. It didn’t completely block it out, but the saw wasn’t as in-your-face as it had been before. She glanced over at Frank to see if she’d helped at all. 

It didn’t seem like it. He still looked like he wanted to leave the room, or die, or kill something, or all three. Frank was doing Leo's mom a favor and watching the two of them, so he couldn't leave, and he couldn't die or kill something for obvious reasons. Leo didn’t know how to help him without drawing Zach's attention to him, which was probably the last thing Frank wanted. Leo sat back down and decided to just wait and see what happened. She felt a little trapped, stuck between making Frank uncomfortable by calling out his discomfort or making herself uncomfortable by staying quiet. Leo opted for the second course of action. She settled in and waited for something to happen.

Oh boy, something sure did happen. Zach was getting to the funny part of his story, Frank was looking increasingly uncomfortable, Leo was feeling very worried about how this was going to end, and then Frank stood up and ran out of the room. He bolted for the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind him. It happened faster than Leo had thought was possible. 

She stood up almost right after Frank closed the bathroom door and ran after him, with Zach hot on her heels. Leo had to keep Zach from barging in on Frank, since Mom wouldn’t be able to get home and help fast enough. Leo was pretty much certain that this was a meltdown. Frank was autistic, and this was a meltdown. Leo had read about how to help autistic people who were having meltdowns. 

She could hear Frank breathing heavily inside the bathroom. He sounded like he was close to the door. After a minute or so, Leo heard footsteps begin, like he was pacing around. Zach opened his mouth, probably to ask Leo what the heck was going on, but Leo put a finger to her lips and herded her little brother out into the kitchen. 

As soon as his feet were solidly planted on the tile, Zach blurted out, “Is this a war thing?”

Leo’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?” she asked, and hoped that his answer would make sense. Thankfully, and surprisingly, it did. 

“Like we learned about at school last year for Veterans’ Day, the pee-ess-tee-dee thing? Doesn’t Pe– Frank have that?”

“I’m not sure about PTSD, but he’s definitely autistic and this is almost definitely a meltdown, Zach. The way you help someone through a meltdown is different from the way you help someone through a flashback.” 

Zach nodded like he understood, which relieved Leo immensely. Her relief was short-lived, as the two of them began to hear loud banging noises coming from the bathroom. Leo couldn’t figure out what Frank was doing that would make so much noise, but she was sure it was nothing good. He could’ve been hurting himself, or breaking something. Leo knew that when someone was having a meltdown, pretty much all bets were off as far as what they might do. 

Zach looked up at Leo with an obvious question on his face: what should they do? Leo ran through a couple ideas in her head. Frank was supposed to be watching them until Mom got home, so there was no other adult to ask for help from (honestly, Leo probably wouldn’t even go with that option if there were another adult present), and Frank had never given Leo or Zach any guidelines for how they should act in a situation like this. 

What would Dad do?

“Zach,” Leo said quietly, “do you know where Dad keeps those earmuffs that he wears when he mows the lawn?” 

Zach nodded, but he obviously didn’t understand why she was asking him the question. “Yeah, they’re in the garage on the coat rack.”

“Can you go get them, please?”

Zach shrugged, nodded, and trotted off in the direction of the garage. Leo sighed and sat down on the couch again while she waited for her brother to return. 

Her plan wasn’t the best, because she didn’t know what was causing Frank so much distress, but Leo thought that it was better than nothing. Basically, she thought that if Frank had some way to block out all the noise, it would help him. Probably.

Zach came running back into the living room clutching the bright yellow earmuffs in his hand. He gave them to Leo and sat back, giving her a questioning look. 

"What are you gonna do with those?" he asked, and his eyes flicked back and forth between Leo, the earmuffs, and the closed bathroom door. Leo could see him trying to make the connection.

She tested the earmuffs to see if they still worked, and they did. Her plan would work, then; even if it didn't work, she would still be able to say she'd tried to help. Leo beckoned her brother over closer to her so she could explain her idea.

"It's simple, dude. I'm just trying to help Frank cancel out as much sensory information as he can, since that's probably why he's having a meltdown. Just open the door and hand the earmuffs to him."

"You do it."

Leo sighed, but she nodded. "Deal. You should do your homework, if you're not gonna help me."

 

-

 

About half an hour after Leo and Zach gave them to him, Frank came out of the bathroom wearing the earmuffs. He had a bruise forming on the side of his face where his forehead met his temple, and his eyes were swollen and tinted red, but he seemed calm. Zach had gone up to his room to work on his science homework, but Leo was still downstairs. She stood up when the bathroom door opened and rushed over to Frank. 

“Are you okay now?”

He shrugged, walked over to the couch, sat down, waited a minute, and grunted out, “Guess I gotta be.” The words sounded like they were being forced out of his throat.

Leo frowned. Suppressing emotions (distress and sensory overload counted as emotions, right?) wasn’t healthy, but that was probably what Frank was doing. It was a defense mechanism. Leo wanted him to know that he was safe in their house, that there was nothing to defend himself from. 

“It’s alright if you’re not—“ Leo began. She stopped talking when she saw her mom’s car pull into the driveway. Frank heard it too, and he walked to the door to greet her, without giving Leo a chance to finish her sentence. She sighed and trailed after him to wait at the door. Zach trotted down the stairs to join them, and their mom walked in the house not long after. She greeted Leo and Zach with a hug and thanked Frank for watching them.

Leo wondered why Mom didn’t comment on Frank’s bruise until she saw that Mom was looking down at her phone. She probably hadn’t gotten a good look at Frank yet. 

Leo wasn’t sure if she should draw attention to the bruise or not. Zach was already back in his room, no doubt playing Fortnite or maybe working on his math homework, so it wasn’t like Leo could consult with her brother. Not that she especially wanted to do that in the first place, but now she definitely couldn’t.   
Mom’s phone was put away in her purse and she was talking to Frank, although she still wasn’t looking at him because her attention was focused on the graded test that Leo had left on the counter for her to see. Leo had gotten 102% because of the bonuses!

“Good job on your test, honey,” Mom said from the kitchen. Frank nodded in agreement with Mom’s sentiment. Leo smiled at him and thanked her mom. 

“That second bonus looks pretty tough,” Frank grunted as he paged through the stapled pack of papers covered in graphite and printer ink. He pointed it out to Mom, who nodded. 

“Yeah, she’s a smart girl,” Mom said, and Leo smiled. She loved it when her parents gave her casual compliments, for some reason. 

“Thank you!” she called from her seat at the table. She saw Frank flinch a little at the noise and immediately regretted making it. “Sorry, Frank, that was loud,” Leo corrected herself, glancing at the man to see how he was doing. He gave her a look of acknowledgment, which was good, but acknowledgement wasn’t forgiveness. Leo thought he was okay, though. She turned her attention back to the tabletop in front of her and waited for Frank to leave so she could ask Mom what was for dinner. 

“Oh my _god_ , Frank, what happened to your head?”

Whomp, there it was. It had taken a pretty long time for Mom to notice Frank’s bruise, but now that she had seen it, she wouldn’t leave him alone. 

“Come on, let me get you some ice for that,” Mom instructed, opening the freezer as she continued to talk. “That looks pretty new, did you fall or something?”

“It’s nothing, Mom,” Leo spoke up for Frank. He gave her an odd look, which quickly changed to a grateful one when he realized what she was doing. Leo knew how to phrase it in a way that wouldn’t make Mom freak out. 

“What do you mean, it’s nothing? Frank’s got a pretty nasty bump on his head there.”

Leo shrugged. She still didn’t know exactly what had happened, but she knew what her mom would be okay with. Frank reached into the cup of ice he was holding to his head and stuck a piece in his mouth to chew on, inviting Leo to answer for him again. 

“Zach was annoying him while he was washing his hands, and Frank turned around really fast to yell at Zach and hit his head on the towel rack over the sink,” she said (she lied—but very creatively). Honestly, that wasn't too far from the actual truth of what had happened.

Everybody seemed okay with that explanation, and Frank shot Leo another grateful look before he left. Mom even said that he should watch Leo and Zach more often, which Frank said was a bad idea.  

He left the house with the beginnings of a smile on his face.

**Author's Note:**

> based on the time i had a meltdown at a friend’s house and her mom did absolutely jack shit while i slammed my head against the bathroom tile 😜 i didn’t mean to have Sarah not do anything but i genuinely don’t know how to write a woman like her just.....interacting with someone during a meltdown and not making the meltdown worse. i’m sorry! but i base the meltdowns/shutdowns that i write about off of my own experiences and yeah.....  
> anyway i hope you enjoyed this (especially @ maddie hendu) please comment and/or leave kudos!!


End file.
